Spirit and letter. . . when did they become opposites?

Roman Catholics have those who hold to the spirit of Vatican II despite that the actual conciliar documents of Vatican II neither advocated nor imagined the dramatic turn of events that followed as the piety and liturgy or Rome changed abruptly.  Some Lutherans speak of the spirit of the Confessions as distinct from the actual Confessions themselves and use this to advocate for open communion, anti-liturgical worship, and a retreat from sacramental life as the center of piety -- things hardly envisioned or supported by the actual documents of the Lutheran Concordia.  Those in favor of full integration of gay and lesbian Christians and the full feminist agenda insist that they are being true to the spirit of the Gospel even though the actual Scriptures do not advocate or support such a radical departure from morality and the creative order of family.  Some insist that wrong is not wrong and sin is not sin if the intention is not wrong and therefore create a holiness that can only reside in desire and not in act.  What all of these have in common is that they claim they follow the spirit of the Bible or of the Gospel or of the Church even while defying explicit passages, unwavering tradition, or consistent moral and ethical teaching.

When did spirit and letter become opposites?  Some will undoubtedly point to the ongoing tension between the Pharisees (people of the letter) and Jesus (Spirit and truth).  Creative exegesis can certainly render unrecognizable the words of Scripture.  We can all affirm that.  Except that nowhere does Jesus disparage the letter -- even when the spirit is most absent.  What our Lord condemned was the choice itself as a false choice and dichotomy and of the unity of spirit and letter as the mark of God's work, the fruit of the Spirit, honest faith, and faithfulness to the Gospel.  Even when Scripture says the Law kills and the Spirit gives life, the passage does not diminish the Law as bad or defective.  In fact this is less about Law and Spirit than it is about the person, under sin, who cannot be righteous by will or act but only by God's gracious gift and the Spirit's work of faith to receive this gift of Christ. 

The antithesis between letter and spirit gained its foothold in Christian circles largely, no doubt, through Paul’s use of it in II Corinthians 3:6: “The letter (written code) kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Due to quirks of historical fate, the passage came to be taken as a kind of hermeneutical key to understanding the Scriptures in general, to say nothing of life as a whole. The passage was understood as pointing to a distinction between a purely outward or “literal” meaning of the text and an inner or “spiritual” and “life-giving” meaning. The hermeneutical task was to find the right method or way to get from one to the other. It was a question of levels of meaning or content. One must learn how to get from mere dead letter to life-giving Spirit. - See more at: http://gnesiolutheran.com/the-genesis-of-the-lawgospel-distinction/#sthash.8CwI1Pxq.dpuf

The antithesis between letter and spirit gained its foothold in Christian circles largely, no doubt, through Paul’s use of it in II Corinthians 3:6: “The letter (written code) kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Due to quirks of historical fate, the passage came to be taken as a kind of hermeneutical key to understanding the Scriptures in general, to say nothing of life as a whole. The passage was understood as pointing to a distinction between a purely outward or “literal” meaning of the text and an inner or “spiritual” and “life-giving” meaning. The hermeneutical task was to find the right method or way to get from one to the other. It was a question of levels of meaning or content. One must learn how to get from mere dead letter to life-giving Spirit. - See more at: http://gnesiolutheran.com/the-genesis-of-the-lawgospel-distinction/#sthash.8CwI1Pxq.dpuf

The antithesis between letter and spirit was certainly fueled by the distortion of Paul's statement in II Corinthians 3:6: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The passage has been so abused that it has become a hermeneutical principle or key to understanding all Scripture (why stop there -- all of life). The letter is not dead but acts to kill even as the Spirit acts to make alive.  It is we who stand before both who are dead in trespasses and sin, without health or life in us.  Instead of this contrast, the passage became about a supposed distinction between a purely outward or “literal” meaning of Scripture (or anything, really) and an inner, spiritual meaning that gives life. The job of the interpreter is then to get from one to the other, even if that means abandoning the clear truth of the letter in pursuit of the idea of spirit. So Scripture became a book of allegories, of levels of meaning over levels of meaning, and gnosticism triumphed in principle if not in  numbers. We still live in an age of gnosticism in which spirit is opposed to letter, the clear word of Scripture in conflict with the principle of the Gospel (unrestrained freedom, acceptance of all that is for what it is).  Could we not say that this was the beginning of the tension between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ, between fact and meaning, between event and lesson?  Origen certainly encouraged this Platonic path though we cannot blame only him for constructing an artificial tension between passage and principle in Scripture or Christian life.

The appeal to the spirit is an appeal to that which lacks definition, content, or specificity.  The spirit of Vatican II, the spirit of the Lutheran Confessions, and the spirit of the Gospel have no doctrinal boundaries or formal shape.  They are vagaries defined by the imagination of the one who makes the appeal.  As nice and neat as they sound, these say nothing at all.  The spirit is embodied in the actual content, the letter if you will, of the thing.  Vatican II is defined by its documents more than by the liturgical chaos that followed at the hands of Paul VI and others intent upon redefining much more than what happens on Sunday morning.  The Lutheran Confessions are defined by what they say and not by some rogue, romantic ideal of freedom, individualism, and the renouncement of authority that some have perpetuated or blamed upon the Reformation.  The Gospel has no power to erase the ideal of the Law and render it obsolete.  Instead the Gospel has fulfilled the Law that those who no longer live under its oppression may become free in Christ to delight in this Word and will of God and seek it with the whole heart, mind, soul, and life.  

Law and Gospel are not merely buzz words or concepts but the concrete of rigorous demand formally defined and the grace that is manifest in the suffering and death of the God-man Jesus Christ for us and for the salvation of the whole world.  Yet too often we treat these categories as convenient baggage for our own predisposed opinions and convictions.  Doctrine and piety [or baptismal vocation] are not in conflict or in competition but conjoined and connected so that they are two faces of the same coin.  The redemptive order has not come to replace the creative order but to restore it from its lost, fallen, and distorted state of sin and its death.

I grow suspicious every time I hear people invoke the spirit of anything.  It is inevitably an invitation to depart from the clarity of word and truth for the vagary of an acceptance, tolerance, and casualness in which little is wrong except "repression" and everything is right in our own eyes.  Spirit and letter are not enemies.  They are more than friends.  They are different perspectives of one and the same thing.  Anything else and we have neither spirit nor letter.